


Once Upon a December

by Shinyunderwater



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22996189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinyunderwater/pseuds/Shinyunderwater
Summary: The Master, newly regenerated after the events of The Doctor Falls, returns home to Gallifrey. Once there he begins searching for answers about the death he can't remember, but instead finds hidden truths about a life he can't remember. He soon realizes that everything he thought he knew was a lie.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. Red Grass

**Author's Note:**

> This story is about how the Master entered the Matrix and what he found there. It contains serious SERIOUS spoilers for the Timeless Children. You have been warned.

It had been a few days since the Master had landed on Gallifrey, quesy from his recent regeneration and discombobulated from the strain of trying to remember the events leading up to it. He was still getting used to his new body, and he spent a great deal of time wandering the halls of the citadel. He had vague memories of a woman, a terrifying woman that commanded him to always carry a dematerialization circuit on his person. The Master had stolen one within hours of landing on Gallifrey, but if she had given him any other instructions he couldn't remember them. He wondered who that woman was.

He was sure that whatever had happened must have involved the Doctor in some way, but whenever he tried to put the random threads of memory together into something cohesive they all dissolved away. The whole situation made him furious. So he wandered. He felt the newness of his limbs and the strangeness of his mind, familiar and yet... not.

He knew the other Time Lords were weary of him, and he had no shortage of exasperation for them, but at the moment they seemed at an impasse. The council was afraid to ask him to leave, and he had nowhere to go. Well, there was the infinite bounds of the universe, all of time and space at his disposal, but other than that, nowhere. He was home after all. He was, in a strange sense, right where he belonged.

But it got old fast. A few schemes, harmless pranks to his mind, nobody even died, did little to ease his boredom, although it did increase the tension between him and his reluctant hosts. He hungered, though what it was he craved he wasn't yet sure. So he wandered. Up and down the halls he paced, searching for the thing he knew not. He wandered and wandered and wandered some more, while frustration and rage built up inside him. He didn't know what he was looking for, but it was being denied him, and that he could not abide. Just when the Master was starting to think he needed to expand the scope of his wandering, that whatever he was looking for wasn't present, he found it. His memories were hidden, but other deeper secrets were available to him.

Deep in the citadel was her home, the Matrix, the repository of all Time Lord knowledge, just begging him to hack into her and slip inside, to feast on the bounty of her knowledge. He was all but giddy with delight as he realized that this, this, was what he had spent days searching for. With his new fingers he set to work dismantling her security system. He relished the challenge, her feeble protests. Had he not heard such objections so many times before? The pleading to cease, the begging for further consideration, even in the cold passionless form these requests took when delivered by a machine they still felt familiar. They comforted him. Soon she gave way. He was almost disappointed. Then he remembered what she had to offer him, and his anticipation tripled. He closed his eyes and reached out for her.  
▪︎

The Master was in the red grass fields. His father's land holdings were vast, and if stood in the center one could look in every direction and not see the end of his estate. The Master frowned. This wasn't right. He took a step forward. The vision passed. The Master felt numerous data pathways swirl around him. Any one of them available for his mind to reach out to. But his father's estate wasn't in any of them and he brushed all of the threads away in anger. This wasn't what he wanted to see. He took a step forward. Where are you?

He took another step. He reached out further with his mind. Show yourself! He snarled. He was still so new to himself. At times he felt a stranger in his own mind, lost and hurting. Last time had been easier. He'd had a purpose, and memories to guide him. He'd landed the Doctor's TARDIS on the Doctor's favorite planet and wasted no time in planning its utter destruction. The Doctor wasn't here now though. Unless he was. The Master grinned. "Doctor," he whispered. "Where are you my old friend?"

He recieved no response. But in a sense that silence was a response, one which enraged him. "Show yourself coward!"

He blinked. For now he was looking in a mirror. Well not quite. He was looking at himself, but the version of himself that went by Harold Saxon. "I already know you," the Master said.

"Ah, but you've forgotten. You've forgotten the most important thing. She got the best of you. How could you let that happen?"

The Master chuckled. "Nobody gets the best of me," he snarled. "You should know that better than anyone."

"Didn't she though?"

"She who," the Master demanded. "Saint Martha? She's nothing. She bought her planet a brief reprieve, that's all."

Saxon shook his head. "Not her."

"Who then?"

"Can't you remember?"

"I wouldn't bloody well be here if I could remember would I?!"

The Master was shouting at nothing. Just as Saxon had sprung into appearance now he was gone. The Master was alone. Well he had been alone before as well, but this was a more solitary loneliness. The Master scowled. "A fat lot of good you were," the Master derided himself.

"Oh I don't know," a woman with a Scottish accent said. "You had your moments."

The Master spun around to see an older woman adorned in Victorian garb, leaning on an umbrella and giving him a cloying sweet fake smile. "Who are you," the Master demanded.

"Well that's the question isn't it? Deep down in the darkest part of your hearts, who are you?" She chuckled.

"I asked you first."

"So did I." She beamed at him. "Come now love. What's the point of this? New body, whole new lease on life really, and here you are in these dusty dead halls, wandering. What's the point? Haven't you anything better to do?" She examined her nails.

"Tell me your name," the Master barked.

She looked up, as though she'd already forgotten him. "You first."

The Master drew himself to his full height, which wasn't what it once had been. "I'm the Master," he growled at her.

"And I always will be," she said in the tone of a solemn promise. "I've so much life to live. Don't waste it here," she said.

The Master scoffed. "You aren't me." But even as he said the words he knew they weren't true. He recognized himself within her, in the cold shrewdness of her eyes. "How did I die," he demanded. "Why can't I remember?"

"You died as you lived."

"What does that mean?"

The scotswoman sighed. "There was fire," she whispered. "It was beautiful." She stared off into the distant nothingness. "You were alone. You chose it." Her eyes snapped over to him. "It isn't too late. This doesn't have to happen. You can go."

The Master took a step forward. He curled his upper lip into a snarl. "I will get what I came here for," he enunciated with menacing deliberation. "You can't stop me."

"I'm not trying to stop you. I'm trying to help you. Well I'm trying to help myself. But it's all the same thing." She grinned. "Take this new life. Grab it with both hands. You don't have to know where it came from. It doesn't matter, and the truth can cause nothing but pain for you. Haven't we suffered enough. Let's get someone else to do the suffering now." She tittered.

The Master stared at her. "They will," he promised. "Once I have my answers."

"You're like a dog with a bone."

"And you're like a bitch who doesn't know when to stop barking!" But once again he was yelling at the emptiness. She was gone. He growled to himself in frustration.

"Master." The Master whirled around again, but there was no one there. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a short shadow flee, but of course it was gone when he turned again to look. "That will be my name. The Master." It was a naive childish voice that spoke. The Master turned in a full circle looking for the voice. He turned and turned and turned again.

"I will be the president one day. I will be the ruler. I will be the king. I will be the master of all. The Master. The Master. The Master." The Master put his hands over his ears. The voice that had been a whisper was growing louder and louder, and now it pounded in his head. "You think that you're so special, but you're not! You're nothing!"

The Master sank to his knees as the voice reached a painful volume. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to close off every orifice and allow the voice no entry. It seeped through his pores into his blood, burrowed into his bones. It came from him and surrounded him. "Master. Master. I will be the Master. I am the Master. Master. Master. Master. Master. I will rule everything. I will control it all. No one will defy me. No one will leave me. No one will hurt-" The Master screamed with rage, and the voice stopped. The silence was deafening. There was a ringing in his ears and he opened his eyes. He was in the red grass fields again. She was there. It was- For a moment he'd known who the woman looking at him was. Then the knowledge had departed. But she was still there, looking at him with disgust.

Her long blond hair framed her rosy cheeks; her green eyes shone. "I thought that you'd be different. I thought that I would love you. I can't stand to look at you."

"Who are you," the Master whispered.

"Don't call me that, I'm not anymore."

"I don't know what to call you," he said again, voice still soft. But the next statement he shouted. "I don't know who you are! Why are you on my father's estate?! You don't belong here!"

"You won't. You never do. You only get worse. All of this is because of you."

The Master got to his feet. "Tell me who you are!"

"When I look at you I hate myself. How could anyone good give birth to a monster like you?" The Master recoiled as the blond woman turned and walked away. Her lemon hued tendrils danced in the wind as she departed and did not look back.

The Master panted. Rage filled him. Hate consumed him. He would make her suffer. He would make her hurt. He would destroy her, but not just her body, because then the pain would end. He would demolish her soul before stripping her down to her bare molecules. "Are you alright?"

The Master turned around. A little girl stood there, looking at him. Somehow he knew, even though he knew nothing else, not even what was happening, somehow he knew it was all her fault. She would have to pay for this. He cocked his head to the side as he stared at her.

"I know it was an accident. I forgive you. I'll tell your mother that I forgive you."

The Master chuckled. His chuckles grew in intensity and fury. They were soon great guffaws. "You forgive me you little idiot?!"

She gasped and backed up. "I'm not a freak! You're wrong!" Her lower lip trembled.

"Oh but you are, why else would you deny it," the Master reasoned.

"My mother does love me! She cares about me and wants me to be happy! Your mother hates you! She wishes you were the one who had died and not me!"

The Master lunged for the child, but his hands didn't connect with anything. The field was empty. The red grass was all that remained. The Master looked up at the twin suns of Gallifrey and realized what was so wrong about all of this. In the distance, where the citadel should have stood, was... nothing, empty sky. The Master turned in a full, slow circle. "All of this is wrong. None of this is..." He saw his house in the distance. There was a comforting familiarity there, but even that was wrong somehow, although he couldn't figure out why at first. Then he realized. There was a ship parked next to it. There was a spaceship, just sitting in his yard like it was supposed to be there. "Where'd you come from," he asked the distant vehicle.

"Sometimes you scare me." The Master turned around, and there he was. His father towered over him. "Sometimes you remind me so much of myself, and sometimes you're completely alien to me."

"You're weak," the Master snapped at him. "All that wealth and all that power. What did you ever do with it? You're a coward."

"Just tell me the truth son. I won't even be angry. Did you mean to kill that girl?"

The Master had no idea what his father was talking about, and yet he was certain he knew the answer. "Yes," the Master snapped. "Whoever she was I hope she suffered." He chuckled.

"I don't believe you," his father said with a sigh. "But it doesn't matter. What's done is done." He hesitated. "I love you son."

The Master recoiled. He had no memory of his father ever having said those words, or even any similar, to him. "Liar," the Master snapped. "You were always a liar."

"I know you do son. Let's put this behind us. No one outside the family ever has to know what happened. You can move on."

The Master stared at his father, so familiar and yet, in that moment, so strange. "You aren't the man I remember. None of this is like I remember. Is this some sort of trick? Is this a secondary security system?"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." The Master whirled around to identify the new voice. It sounded like a sobbing mewling little boy. But there was no one there. His father was gone. He was alone in the red grass. The Master looked towards the strange spaceship, and he started for it.


	2. Blood Relations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Master is going through some stuff.

The Master stood in front of his house. He closed his eyes and inhaled the familiar scents of the herb garden (his mother's) and wood smoke drifting from the chimney. This was comfort. This was home. And yet... He opened his eyes. The ship was gone now, and a young boy came racing out of his house. "Dad! Dad! She came back! Mom! Dad! Come and see!"

The Master gasped and looked away. This was all wrong. "You don't need to stay here." The Master laughed. He recognized the voice. He didn't have to turn around to see who it was. "We can leave now."

"Professor Yana," the Master said. He laughed again. Perhaps hysteria tinged his mirth, but that was no matter. "What a silly pointless fool you were." The Master turned to face him at last. "Do you think you have anything to say that I would care to hear? You are meaningless."

The professor shook his head. "There's no reason for you to stay here. It's time to move on. There's nothing for you here."

"There are answers."

"Not the ones you're looking for," Yana assured him. "There's nothing here for you but pain. A thing, once seen, cannot be unseen," Yana cautioned him.

"I'm already in pain," the Master hissed.

"There's so much more of it waiting for you here. You've forgotten what it's like to be a child. But I was a child. When we used the chameleon arc I became a child. I remember the fear and confusion. I remember the vulnerability. What happened here was long ago. Let it be done. You can leave this place, this time."

The Master frowned. "Is it dangerous?"

Yana seemed confused. "Yes, it-"

"To others, not just me?"

Yana sighed. "It is."

The Master smirked. "Then I will see it."

"I'm sorry," Yana said. Then he was gone.

"Who are you," the Master heard a little boy's voice say. He turned around. There was the ship. In front of it stood a woman, with her arm around a young girl.

The Master heard his father speak. "This is Tecteun, your aunt, my sister. And this is..."

The Master stared at the child. "This is my daughter," Tecteun said. The Master saw his father quirk up an eyebrow. "We have had a long journey brother."

"Of course, come inside. Have some food. Rest yourselves. You can regale us with tales of your adventures."

The Master stepped closer. He had no memories of this, of any of this. Yet when he looked at the strange woman, his aunt if any of this was to be believed, he felt a flash of recognition. He stared at the woman and felt hate, strong and hungry. Just a glimpse of her filled him with instant homicidal rage. He must know her.

"Hello dear boy. So you're my nephew. How strange it is for us to be meeting for the first time." She smiled at him, and the hatred swelled in him. He felt it clawing at his gut, as though he had swallowed a rat which now wanted to break free.

Something broke in him. A dam was washed away by a wave of sensations. Pain. Fear. Anger. Desire. Shame. Pride. Guilt. Love. Abhorrence. Betrayal. Abandonment. Agony. Agony. Agony. And as he screamed a voice spoke to him distinct and clear. He knew the voice, although every part of him wanted to deny it. "I love you. I will always love you." He screamed and screamed until the darkness fell over him.

The Master woke up back at the Citadel in the Chamber of the Matrix. He opened his eyes and propped his arms under him. He blinked. After spending so much time in the liquid plane of memory the present nature of reality felt heavy, suffocating. He pushed himself to his knees. "What are you doing down here," a furious voice demanded. The Master blinked up at a man with hard lines on his face and furious eyes. "You have no reason to be down here," the Time Lord said as he towered over the Master.

The Master laughed.

"What's so funny you-"

The man was cut off when the Master struck like a snake. He sprung forward, wrapping his hands around the man's neck and forcing him against the wall. "You lied to me." The man tried to protest, but the Master's actions prevented him. "You all lied to me. Each and every one of you lied."

"Master," the man managed to croak. "Stop. Why are you doing this?"

The Master let go with one hand. He fished the dematerialization circuit out of his pocket. "Do you know what happens if you plug one of these directly into organic matter?" The man's eyes widened as he attempted to flee. The Master chuckled, and once again they turned to guffaws. "Neither do I," he managed to get out between waves of uncontrollable laughter. He disconnected the two ends and jammed both into the Time Lord's neck. The man screamed as he phased in and out of reality for a moment before his atoms lost their cohesion and he joined the nothingness. The circuit was gone as well. "I need to remember to grab another one of those," the Master said in a nonchalant voice.

The Master turned around. "Right." He clapped his hands and then rubbed them together. "Where was I?" He walked back over to the Matrix interface. "And where was he during all of this? Where was the Doctor? Show him to me." The Master reached out with his mind. "Show me!" He pushed into the Matrix. He slammed past tendrils of memories, pathways of thought, quagmires of feeling. He swam through the waters of time until- He stopped. A police man was looking at him. "What is this? Where am I? What happened to Gallifry?" The two of them were stood at a cliff edge. The policeman was far too close to the sheer dropoff, a fact which the Master would have delighted in, but for some reason made him feel trepidation instead.

Uproarious laughter took him by surprise. He turned around to see the Victorian woman again. "You did," she said. "You happened to Gallifrey." A gunshot rang out, and the Master turned around in time to see the policeman fall off a cliff. "That looks like it hurt. Why would you do such a thing?" Her mocking tone carried an undercurrent of pain, and if he didn't know better he would have said sympathy.

"I was just playing," the Master whispered, although he didn't know why he said that.

"Were you?"

"Everyone kept acting like she was special. She wasn't special." The Master was speaking in a monotone. "I'm the special one. They should have been paying attention to me."

"But she was your friend."

The Master walked away from the woman, from himself. He walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. A young black girl lay there, braids splayed out on the rocks, face still. "Was she," he whispered.

"No," the woman whispered. "She was more than that. You couldn't bear it."

"I want to see." He turned around to face himself. "Show me the truth."

"Haven't you seen enough? Aren't you tired of this? They'll discover what you did soon. You should leave before there are consequences," she warned.

The Master scoffed. "Do you believe I care what the Time Lords think? They're nothing. Maybe learning of the fate of their fallen comrade will instill them with a bit more respect, or at the very least weariness. I've no concern for them. Show me what happened here." The Master began to speak faster and with more hysteria. "These memories, they are all my own. I can feel the familiarity. Why did I forget these moments? What is all of this anyway?" Rage and fear bred within him; like a virus they attacked every healthy thought in his body. Desperation was their offspring. "I need to see the rest so I can put the pieces together. Show me my father's memories, my alleged aunt's. Show me what happened. I demand to know."

The woman snorted. "You demand?"

"Yes."

"Demands are not made of me."

The Master stared at her. "Tell me, this time no evasions, how did I die?"

"You stood with the Doctor," she whispered to himself. "You made it right."

"No." He shook his head.

"You asked."

"No!" He screamed in her face, taking large strides forward to invade her space. He expected her to dissolve away again, but she didn't. "Tell the truth!"

"That is the truth," she said in a jovial unconcerned tone. "You don't have to like it, but there it is. You died for him."

"No! Not for him! Not me! It's me! I'm the important one! I'm the Master! I am the destroyer of worlds!"

She shook her head and laughed, a soft mournful laugh. "As you say."

"I would never die for the Doctor." His face was contorted into a demonic sneer.

"But you have so many times."

"Liar!"

"Look!" She shoved him to the ground. As he fell he felt like a spike was being rammed into his skull, a spike made out of lightning. "Remember me! Remember!"

"I won't let her hurt you again." The Master felt tears burn behind his eyes as he recognized the voice of a boy that he had once been. He had never said those words, and yet he must have. "You want him you'll have to go through me." He balled his hands into fists. Protective instinct flared in his youthful mind. "Stay behind me!" He bared his teeth like a feral animal. He would die to protect his love if he had to. He was older, and the determination of his youth had galvanized into something even stronger. "She's worth it." The lightning burned through his head as he tried to understand a past he couldn't remember. "I bring your daughter into this world and all I get is a broach?"

"NO!" The Master opened his eyes. He was standing in the emptiness of the Matrix, staring at a man who looked like a decaying corpse, staring at himself.

"You want to live forever."

"I deserve it. Me. Not her." The Master punctuated each word by pounding a fist into his chest, as if trying to restart his hearts. "I'm the special one."

"Of course you're special." The Master turned around to face a new speaker. He was looking at a middle aged man with lines all over his face. "I love you."

"Doctor," the Master snarled.

"I'll always love you, my beloved wife."

"I'm so much more than that. I'm so much more than you."

"I understand. The children and I will be here when you return. I'll miss you, but that will just make it all the sweeter when I see you again. Perhaps I'll have a new face, be a touch handsomer." He chuckled. This fragment of memory didn't see the Master, or rather he saw a past Master. He was speaking to the Master as a younger woman, a woman he had loved, one he had married and had children with. As much as every part of the Master rebelled against this knowledge he could not escape the certainty that is was somehow true.

"Shut up," the Master snapped.

The Doctor lit up. "I know you think so love, but imagine your shock when you return and I am even more desirable."

"Shut! Up!"

"Mum!" A woman's voice slammed into the Master's head like shards of glass from a shattered window. "Mum stop it!" The Master turned again. A short young woman with pale skin, oval eyes and midnight black hair was screaming at the decayed corpse. "I hate you! Get away from me and away from my daughter! I never want to see you again! I will never understand why dad ever chose you, but I-"

"Shut! Your! Mouth!" The figments vanished. "This is not what I came here to see. This is not what I want to remember."

"What do you want," the Master of the future asked, reappearing to twirl her umbrella over her head. "Do enlighten us."

"I want to know where I come from. I want to know why I'm here. Show me."

She stepped forward. She stared into his eyes, and for the first time since she had appeared to him she seemed to regard him as something serious. "Don't hurt my love," she said in a somber tone.

"I'll do what I like. When it's your turn you can live our life as you please. This is my time. I'll tear him to pieces if I want. Show me the truth. I'll burn the truth out of this place if I have to, but you know a shorter way, don't you? Show me."

She stared at him. "Close your eyes."

He did. He felt the pathways of the Matrix swirl around him, and then part for him as a path made itself known before him. He felt a surge in his chest. His eyes snapped open and he looked up at the stars. His mouth opened and words poured out, words that were not his own. "I'm sorry mother, but I need to know what's out there. I need to see it, to touch the stars. I know you're sick, and that by the time I return you might be gone, but what if I find something out there that can help you. You think I'm being selfish, and no doubt you're right, but I have to go." He reached out for a distant star. "I have to go." The stars grew bigger and brighter. He threw his arm over his eyes to shield them from the light.

"Where did you go sister?" His father's voice was stern and commanding. Years had passed. The stars had been visited. Time, that slow insistent stream, had brought Tecteun home again. "Mother has sickened far beyond medical intervention. Machines keep her alive, and she is unaware of the world around her. You missed the last good years of her life."

The Master peeked. He was standing in front of a bed, where a pale scarecrow of a woman lay. She was a heartbeat away from death, existing in a single prolonged final breath. Yet the Master felt from the owner of this memory not sorrow, but triumph. All of her work had paid of, and her brother had been proven wrong. She was a good daughter and a wonderful mother. "I've done it mother," he whispered. "You see? It worked on me. It will work on you too. Your grandchild has saved us, will save our whole species."

The screams of a wailing child echoed in his ears. They took up physical space in his head, weighing him down. "I don't understand," he confessed. "I can't see it."

A teenage boy walked up to him. "Auntie?"

He looked down at himself. "What," he asked with equal parts exasperation and annoyance. "What do you want?" The sickbed was gone. Whatever answers that memory might have held had slipped away. Years had passed. The boy was no longer a boy and not quite a man.

"I didn't mean to hurt her."

"You did though." He knew the boy couldn't hear him, but his quest for truth made him feel compelled to speak it. The Master had reveled in deception for so long, but discovering that he had been deceived, and to such an extent, soured him to lies for the nonce.

"It doesn't matter if you forgive me," he answered words the Master couldn't hear. "If you hurt her again I'll kill you. I've done it before, as you know." He grinned.

The Master clapped. "Oh well done me!" He mirrored the grin as he clapped. He was enjoying his young self's murderous intentions so much he almost let something important escape his notice. "Who are we talking about?"

Everything melted away. The Master was in the blankness of the Matrix again, facing himself once more. He smirked at his out of fashion moustache and cape. He returned his smirk. "He's the love of my life. The only one who was ever worth my attention. And I'm the love of his. He likes to play with Earth girls, but he always comes back to me. I'm the one that's special. It's him and me, the two of us, forver," the Master's past said with a dramatic swish of his cape.

"The Doctor," the Master said.

"Yes," he agreed with himself.

"But where was he for all of this? We played together as children. Why isn't he here? Why did he never mention this?"

The Master shook his head at himself. "Have you forgotten with such ease? Are you so quick to let go of your own past?"

The Master stared at him, trembling with anticipation. "Show it to me. I won't forget again. Let me see what I am, who I am."

"Once seen-"

"I know it can't be unseen! Now show me you senile old fool! Give me what is mine by rights! Let me see the truth, so that I can raze to the ground all who thought to deceive me! Starting with the Doctor!"

The pain began behind his eyes. He was lost and afraid. He pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead. "You aren't strong enough," the scotswoman's voice whispered.

"I'm stronger than you. I'm stronger than all of you! I. Am. The. Master!"

The twin suns of Gallifrey rose in front of his eyes, scorching images of fire and pain into his retinas. "I know it hurts. I'm sorry," he heard Tecteun say.

The Master stood in a lane. There was a baby in a basket. A man picked up the basket. "Lies," the Master whispered as he followed the man home. "Show me the real one. Show me the truth," he growled.

The image flickered, and the Master saw the little dead girl from earlier playing with a toy spaceship, before she turned into a ginger boy playing with a toy plane. "You can't hide from me you bitch," he snapped.

He watched a theif shoot the ginger boy, now older and the policeman from the cliffside, and when the theif turned to run the Master saw his own self. Tecteun grabbed his shoulders and began to shake him. "What did you do? You've killed my daughter you little brat! What did you do?!" She slapped him, and then released his shoulders to run to the bottom of the hill.

"Ah," the Master said as if what he had just seen meant nothing to him. "Now I understand." The veil fell away, and he saw everything. The entirety of Time Lord history, less than the Time Lords claimed but still quite a bit, flowed into his head. He felt it all. Each moment of time, lost to the annals of history, lived again in him. "I see," he whispered. "I see you."

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? Complaints? Questions? If so post below.


End file.
